The national identities of post-Soviet societies profoundly influenced the politics and economics of Eurasia during the 1990s. These identities varied along two distinct but related dimensions: their content and contestation. Nationalist movements throughout post-Soviet Eurasia invoked their nations in support of specific purposes, which frequently cast Russia as the nation’ s most important “ other” and the state from which autonomy and security must be sought. Nationalists therefore offered specific proposals for the content of their societies’ collective identities. But not everyone in these societies shared the priorities of their nationalist movements. Indeed, the international relations among post-Soviet states often revolved around one central question: did post-Soviet societies and politicians agree with their nationalists or not? The former Communists played a decisive role in contesting the content of national identity. One of the defining differences among post-Soviet states during the 1990s was the political and ideological relationship in each one between the formerly Communist e lites and the nationalists— whether the former Communists marginalized the nationalists, arrested them, coopted them, bargained with them, or even tried to become like them. These different relationships revealed different degrees and kinds of societal consensus about national identity after Soviet rule. Post-Soviet societies sorted themselves into roughly three groups. 1 One included the former republics on the Baltic littoral: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. In the three new Baltic states the nationalist movements’ authority and fundamental goals were relatively uncontested during the 1990s; their demands for political-economic reorientation toward Europe, their interpretation of dependence on Russia as a security threat, and their portrayal of Russia as the nation’ s defining “ other” influenced their governments’ policies. Even Communist successor parties in the three states adopted the rhetoric and goals of the nationalists. 2 In a second group of countries— including Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova— the nationalists and former Communists remained deadlocked, their respective bases of support divided largely along regional lines. Regional contestation of national identity in these four states prevented their governments from decisively choosing a politicaleconomic orientation toward either West or East. Finally, a third group of states—